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  • Being a Buddhist Nun: The Struggle for Enlightenment in the Himalayas
  • Karma Lekshe Tsomo
Being a Buddhist Nun: The Struggle for Enlightenment in the Himalayas. By Kim Gutschow. Harvard University Press, 2004. 333 pages. $29.95.

This book is a thorough ethnography and feminist assessment of the lives and cultural environment of the nuns of Kachö Drubling (bKa 'spyod sgrub gling) Nunnery, located above the village of Karsha in Zangskar, a remote Himalayan region in northern India, southwest of Ladakh. In the first chapter, Gutschow introduces the topic of monasticism for women in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition that is practiced in Zangskar. Attempting a scholarly analysis that incorporates both Buddhist and feminist perspectives, she sets out to "unravel the paradox of merit and hierarchy" (18). Discussing the absence of full ordination for nuns in the Tibetan tradition, she contends that the ordination rites "enable the authority of monks as much as they limit the agency of nuns" (168). She then raises the sticky issue of the eight gurudharmas (translated as "eight heavy rules") that subordinate nuns to monks in the monastic order (Sangha), as being in direct contradiction to the Buddha's egalitarian path to liberation.

The next chapter tells the story of three nuns (Yeshe, Deskyid, and Angmo) who, in 1956, set out on foot to travel from Karsha to Lhasa (Tibet), where they received the precepts of novice Buddhist nuns from the abbot of Ganden Monastery. After the three nuns returned the next year, they founded Kachö Drubling, the first monastery for women in Zangskar, on a rocky cliff opposite Karsha Monastery, an historically significant monastery for men. To provide context, Gutschow presents a very useful political and economic history of Zangskar and then locates Buddhist monasticism within Zangskari society. To illustrate the complex economic relationships between monastics and laity, and between monks and nuns, she describes the local festivals and the ritual cycle at the monks' monastery in comparison with that of the nuns, highlighting the stark differences in economic support that monks and nuns receive. In addition to a discussion of local marriage practices and kinship relations, she explains the socially transformative role of celibacy for women. She also examines the hierarchically structured Buddhist "economy of merit" that, she argues, leaves women perpetually disadvantaged. [End Page 506]

Gutschow develops and substantiates this analysis in the chapter titled "The Buddhist Economy of Merit." She recounts the challenges the Kachö Drubling nuns have faced in establishing and maintaining their nunnery, arguing that the practice of merit-making exacerbates differences of gender and wealth in lay society and in the economies of the nunnery and monastery. Liberally weaving narratives into what might otherwise be a catalogue of ethnographic detail, she skillfully documents the history of Buddhism in the region, including data related to land ownership and monastic organization. Gutschow also makes a case for the monastery as a corporation and contrasts the ritual roles played by nuns and monks. Along with three very useful maps, the book also includes twenty photographs of the nuns in the high-altitude desert landscape where they manage to eke out their survival.

The chapter entitled "The Buddhist Traffic in Women" recounts the stories of specific nuns and the circumstances that have led them to embrace monastic life. These stories not only dispel many misconceptions about the motivations of nuns but also clarify the societal expectations placed on both laywomen and nuns in Zangskar. By becoming a nun, a woman escapes marriage and exerts her independence from men, yet, Gutschow claims, "monks retain rights over nuns in the monastic realm" (166) and "nuns are subordinated to the material needs of monks and lay society" (167). Use of the phrase "traffic in women" in this chapter seems inappropriate, because it is widely used to denote women in the sex trade. This seems an unfortunate choice of words in referring to celibate Buddhist nuns. The next chapter proceeds to describe the process of becoming a novice nun. Although Buddha may not be the source of the gurudharmas that require bhiks un is, to be ordained by a full quorum of bhiks u and bhiks un , officiants, ordination as a novice (dge tsul...

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